the last blog!!!

I had always just considered marketing classes to be about the 4 Ps – price, promotion, place, and product. Topics were always geared at developing the marketing mix to effectively communicate your products and services to the consumer. I didn’t really have a conception of what the utility of customer insights would be, but after taking this course, I now really feel like the power of insight is something to be reckoned with! It’s a way of thinking and solving customer needs that I had never thought about before. Of course, the idea of developing products and services based on customer insights is nothing new or innovative to me, but I just never considered the practical use of it. I really enjoyed the different angle that this course took – using what we know about marketing (i.e. segmentation, targeting, brand positioning, marketing research) to develop a product. I consider it almost like reverse engineering. In my other marketing classes, we have always taken a product, studied its features and qualities, and then cut up our market. This class we did the exact opposite – we took a segment, researched them, and then developed a product for that market. I liked this method because we were able to see problems during different phases that we might have never been exposed to in other marketing classes. The overall experience in customer insights was definitely a different one that I feel I probably wouldn’t have gotten in other classes.

The guest presentation that I enjoyed the most was definitely prototyping. I thought it was fascinating to see the process of how people turn an idea into a feasible and realistic model of what the actual product would look like. Often times in marketing, we only get to work with concepts, models, and strategies. However, prototyping was a cool way to add some tangibility to our ideas and strategies. What I really remember most about the presentation was that prototyping does not have to be perfect, or even functional. I guess I’ve always had this preconceived notion that when people come up with ideas, their first sample. What I’ve learned is that it’s a gradual process and your product will almost certainly NOT be the way the final product looks. The most important aspect of prototyping is just communicating the idea and adding a measure of tangibility to it. Our prototype was by no means anything like I had envisioned in my head. However, after going through the process of presenting it and explaining its features, I felt like the prototype was an adequate medium for conveying the purpose of our product, as well as adequate for showing how our product relates to the insights that we found.

As you are probably well aware of, I had quite the emotional experience with my team during the course of the project. When it came down to turning our insights and research into an actual product, I deviated from the other group members and came up with an idea that I thought was superior. This of course caused conflict and I was generally unhappy about our product. However, after I finally agreed to just let it go and got on board with the rest of the group, it turns out that the project was pretty good. Our product met all of the criteria set forth by the project, and we were able to create a prototype that accurately represented what we wanted our product to be. Now even though I still think that the other option was better, I learned that sometimes it’s just better to agree with the group and not cause as much conflict as I did. That’s not to say that one should never voice their opinions if they are valid, but when they begin to impede the progress of the group rather than expand the ideas being exchanged, it’s best to swallow your pride and make lemon-aide when life gives you lemons.